System and method to preserve user's privacy in a vehicle miles traveled system
AssigneeGeotoll, Inc.
InventorsJaime Andres Borras, Wyatt Drake Geist
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A road usage charge system uses a proprietary blockchain to conduct transactions for road usage fees. While driving, a mobile device or equivalent tracks the vehicle location, speed, time of day, day of week, and any other parameter that may be used to modify a base road use fee are tracked and applied to conditional modifiers of the smart contract to create a new transaction block. As a result, the tedious reconciliation process normally associated with vehicular payments can be avoided.
Claims8
A blockchain based road usage charge method, comprising:
- determining, at a vehicle, that the vehicle is moving;
- while the vehicle is moving, in an iterative loop:
- determining a location of the vehicle;
- determining a region type for a roadway on which the vehicle is traveling by comparing the location of the vehicle to one or more geofence definitions, wherein the region type indicates a base usage rate;
- determining whether a surcharge condition applies and adding the surcharge if the surcharge applies;
- determining a distance driven on the roadway;
- and
- writing the distance driven and total of the base usage rate and surcharge in an encrypted block in a blockchain.
A method of protecting a user's location privacy and avoiding a need for reconciliation in a VMT system, comprising:
- establishing a block in a blockchain for a vehicle, the blockchain composed of a distributed ledger, and wherein a VMT agency can access blocks for the vehicle in order to settle VMT payment;
- determining, by equipment in the vehicle, a distance driven, a classification of locations where the vehicle is driven based on pre-defined geofence definitions, and determining whether any fee modifier applies to the distance driven or portions of the distance driven;
- and
- writing into the block, by the equipment in the vehicle, the distance driven and any fee modifiers that apply;
- wherein the total distance driven and the fee modifiers for portions of the distance driven are used by the VMT agency to determine a total VMT fee.
A method for optimizing location accuracy for VMT operation, comprising:
- at a mobile device which is running a VMT application program. detecting a connected vehicle API,
- the mobile device connecting to the connected vehicle API and obtaining a vehicle identifier, an odometer reading;
- the mobile device initiating a new block for the vehicle in a blockchain including the vehicle identifier and odometer reading;
- the mobile device selecting one of a satellite location receiver of the vehicle or a satellite location receiver of the mobile device;
- and
- using the selected satellite location receiver to obtain periodic location fix data that is compared to geofence definitions of roadways in order to determine a roadway being travelled and a VMT fee rate to be applied to distance travelled on the roadway.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.